Commentary, sarcasm and snide remarks from a Florida resident of over thirty years. Being a glutton for punishment is a requirement for residency here.
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Friday, June 01, 2007

Nuclear waste dump

OSLO, Norway - A nuclear waste dump in the Russia Arctic may be in danger of exploding because of corrosion caused by salt water in enormous storage tanks, the Norwegian environmental group Bellona warned Friday.

The three tanks are used to store spent nuclear fuel rods at Andreeva Bay, on the Kola Peninsula of northwestern Russia, just 28 miles from the Norwegian border, the Oslo-based group said in a statement.

"We discover now that we are sitting on a powder keg, with a fuse that is burning, but we don't know how long that fuse is," said Alexander Nikitin, a former Russian navy officer who is now one of Bellona's nuclear experts.

The group cited a report from Rosatom, the Russian nuclear authority, describing the danger. Bellona said the storage tanks were long believed to be dry inside, but that recent studies show corrosive salt water is inside the tanks.

"Ongoing degradation is causing fuel to split into small granules. Calculations show that the creation of a homogenous mixture of these particles with water can cause an uncontrolled chain reaction," said the group's Norwegian translation of the report.

Bellona has long been involved in probes of the nuclear risks in Russia, especially on the Kola Peninsula. Its 1996 report on conditions there were a reference work even for Russian officials.

Experts have said the Kola Peninsula has the world's greatest concentration of nuclear materials, with aging nuclear power plants, rusting hulks of Russian Northern Fleet atomic submarines and waste dumps.

The Russian nuclear fleet's home port was Murmansk, which isn't that far from Norway. I always wondered what happend to the old Soviet subs.